Argumentative Essay: Should Animals Have Rights

Animals carry an important role throughout human lives every day. Humans look to animals for numerous things such as: pets, a means of production, food, entertainment, experimental means, etc. Many animals carry human like traits, which raises many arguments and different positions on the subject of whether animals deserve rights while others feel that animals are simply animals, but may have certain interests that humans are obligated to respect. The issue is that many people confuse the terms animal rights and animal welfare when there is a fundamental difference between the two that revolves around the rights that humans have to use animals.

Many of us can have different opinions on what animal rights mean and what it is. We can have two sides on it, one is where we should stop the cruelty and stop many factories from brutalizing the animals they have, and another side where we could just don’t do anything and leave them be and accept the fact that we eat them. I know if someone can stop any industries it’s us because we have the mindset to do it and accomplish it, carpe diem. Lastly, we should have animal rights with some limitations and taking some things under

In Jeremy Rifkin’s article, “A Change of Heart about Animals”, proves his statement that many of our fellow creatures also “feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love..”. I agree that animals share similar feelings as us, and I believe that they should be treated in a way that they can feel comfortable and care in their surroundings. Just because animals may not be completely the same as us, that should not give the right to a human to mistreat and abuse of an animal’s life. Animals can be well treated and cared for without giving them the right to be treated as a human.

Peter Singer is a utilitarian philosopher that believes we should accept the principle of equal consideration of interests. This principle states that all beings, both human and nonhuman animals should have their interests considered with the same weighting. Singer believes this principle must be adopted to avoid becoming speciesist: defined as the preference of one species over another species. He compares this practice to racism and sexism but instead of discriminating by race or sex, we discriminate by species. Through careful consideration of Singer’s argument and objections, we are able to reject his claim that a nonhuman animal has the same interests as a human.

Rifkin’s overall view of animals is that they should have more rights. I strongly disagree in giving animal more rights than some humans worldwide do not have. We, as humans, live off these animals. They are what we survive on. We need them for their meat and their fur. It is basically survival of the fittest. Giving animal’s rights should be necessary only if they are being abused. For example, forcing dogs to fight other dogs till one is dead. If the animals are killed for our basic human needs than it should not be wrong.

As previously mentioned, Taylor’s biocentrism argument positions non-human animals as teleological centres of life with an objective good of their own. In accordance with Taylor’s biocentric outlook on nature, non-human animals have legal rights. While he does not claim that these non-human animals have moral rights, he believes that these moral rights should be applied to nonhuman animals (Taylor, 218). If animals can be seen as teleological centers of life, then they ought to have legal rights. Since Taylor states that all living things have equal inherent worth, humans, acting as rational moral agents, are required to respect the moral equality of teleological centers of life and give the same respect to non-human animals that they do to human beings. If animals are harmed for

Mistreating animals as if one does not care for them is the same as mistreating humans. By mistreating poor doubtless animals it affects them and can sometimes lead into suffering stress. If humans are able to protect each other from harm, then why cannot animals do the same thing by having rights? This question is usefully asked for those who try to protect the rights of animals. In the article Of Primates and Personhood the author Ed Yong, a science journalist, contends, “I feel we should extend rights to a wide range of nonhuman animals… ‘all creatures that can feel pain should have a basic moral status’” (5). Personally I agree with his saying, if animals are allowed to have a basic moral status, then chances are that less harm towards the animals will be

In the article All Animals Are Equal, written by Peter Singer addresses the inadequacies surrounding the rights of animals in the societies of today. Singer opens the article by presenting a scholarly parallels between the fight for gender equality, banishment of racism and the establishment of rights for “nonhumans.” In order to explain this constant set of inequalities that seem to riddle our society, Singer readily uses the term “speciesism”, which he acquired from a fellow animals rights advocator, Richard Ryder. Essentially, this term is defined by Singer as a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species. Singer claims that if this idea of speciesism

The Animal Bill of Rights is a petition sponsored by the Animal Legal Defense Fund that protects animals from unnecessary suffering caused by humans. The Bill of Rights provides basic rights to laboratory animals, farm animals, companion animals and wildlife. It enumerates the right for animals to be free from cruel and unnecessary experiments. The bill proposes animals should be in an environment which satisfies their basic physical and psychological needs. By signing the Bill of Rights, we agree that animals, like all sentient beings, are entitled to basic legal rights in our society. I agree with the idea of creating a Bill of Rights for animals because humans share similar characteristics with animals, thus we have a moral obligation to

One topic that many scholars are debating right now is the topic of animal rights. The questions are, on what basis are rights given, and do animals possess rights? Two prominent scholars, Tom Regan and Tibor Machan, each give compelling arguments about animal rights, Regan for them and Machan against them. Machan makes the sharp statement, “Animals have no rights need no liberation” (Machan, p. 480). This statement was made in direct opposition to Regan who says, “Reason compels us to recognize the equal inherent value of these animals and, with this, their equal right to be treated with respect” (Regan, p. 477). Machan believes he has the best theory explaining why animals do not have rights. He makes this claim by first acknowledging how

How animals are treated can also affect daily human life. Animal rights are rights given to animals to be free from exploitation, cruelty, neglect, and abuse and enumerates further rights for laboratory animals, farm animals, companion animals, and wildlife. Some animals should have a Bill of Rights. This law does go against centuries of human culture. This law would increase the cost of food. This law would hinder medical research.

Many Americans blindly believe that animals deserve the same rights as humans, but little do they know about the differences between the welfare of animals and the rights of animals. In the article A Change of Heart about Animals, Jeremy Rifkin cleverly uses certain negative words in order to convince the readers that animals need to be given same rights as humans, and if not more. Research has shown that non-human animals have the ability to “feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love” (Rifkin 33). Animals may be able to feel emotions, however this does not necessarily mean that they are able to understand what having rights mean. While humans must accept their moral responsibility to properly care for animals,

Have you ever wondered how much atrocious animal treatments are occurring around the world? The average number of animal abuse cases reported in the media each year is 1,920 according to a study conducted this year by Statistic Brain Research Institute. Moreover, a lot of animals struggle around the globe because they are often beaten, neglected and hunted, which forces them to fight for survival. Helpless animals continue to be exploited by humans and are still constantly being robbed of their lives. Thus, animal cruelty is the killing, exploiting and neglecting the needs of animals that are causing extinction and nonessential suffering.

Rights are against the use of force and they are our primary if not only our means of survival. There is only one fundamental right: To live successfully, a man has to make his own choices as well as animals too (Roleff,2014,p.33). There is a huge difference between giving animals their rights which is less than human beings and not to give them rights at all. Nowadays animals are presented in many places of entertainment such as zoos and cruces as well as aquariums where the audients pay a lot of cash to watch fun and exciting things going on, it sure makes us happy but what about the animals are they happy too? Are places of entertainment appropriate for wild animals to live in it normally? let`s find out. Some people believe that animal

Imagine a day in the life of a common farm animal. Far from the peaceful grazing life one would envision, the livestock of today endure horrific conditions - from suffering painful diseases to being separated from their mothers at too young of an age. Not only are these conditions harmful to the animals, the food produced by them is unnecessary to humanity’s well-being and can even be damaging to society’s overall health. Since the definition of ethics is having well-founded standards of right and wrong, this process of producing meat for our consumption is unethical.